BBC campaign update and Nov demo

Good news – a substantial number of Humanists UK patrons will sign an open letter to BBC Director-General Tony Hall calling on the BBC to let humanists on Thought for the Day.

We’re handing it over at our next demo on Tuesday 13 November, 8am to 10am, and it includes some household names so Watch This Space!

Please come along to be part of this little piece of history – another blow for the right of the British public to know about humanism.

Barbara Smoker handing over her letter

We were proud when veteran campaigner and philosopher Barbara Smoker joined us at our October demo. Barbara, a former President of the National Secular Society, led an important chapter in the Thought for the Day campaign – back in 2002! She and the NSS took a legal action against the BBC, asserting that the ban on non-religious contributors was a breach of her human rights.

The case was widely reported, and supported by Harold Pinter, Richard Dawkins and Michael Foot amongst over a hundred others who wrote to BBC governors asking for atheist and secular thinkers to be included.

In the letter she handed in to the BBC last month, Barbara said: “This year my local group, South East London Humanists, has taken up the protest once more on behalf of all those, non-religious and religious, who recognise that an interest in life’s big questions, social welfare and current affairs is a human trait and not exclusive to religion.
If the name of the slot was ‘Prayer for the Day’ we would not want to take part in it, but it is gross impertinence to deny us ‘Thought’.
We urge you to take our message seriously and end the discrimination against humanism and other non-religious world-views.”